by Ben Creed
‘That is what I now believe, comrade, yes.’
‘And who do you think is the culprit?’
‘In all honesty, I have no idea.’
Beria picked up a file from the top of the stack.
‘Leningrad has always been a troublesome city. There were the regrettable incidents around the trade fair in ’49 where my MGB officers uncovered a nest of capitalist vipers; many bohemian artists, writers and musicians amongst them. Minister Malenkov made the initial accusation but, in my humble opinion, failed to pursue the traitors with the required amount of Bolshevik vigour.’
It was widely known that Beria found it hard to resist criticising Malenkov – the man thought to be his main rival in the race to be Stalin’s successor.
He handed the file to Rossel.
‘I have circled a name in there that may be of interest to your investigation.’
Rossel started to open it. Beria waved a discouraging hand in the air.
‘No, not yet. Later, when you are alone, I think. Once you have perused the information, Lieutenant Rossel, I have every confidence that you will know exactly how to proceed.’
Now I understand, thought Rossel. Stalin puts pressure on Beria to clear up the crime. Beria decides on a culprit. But, then, as added insurance, he calls in an expendable militia officer to do his dirty work. Just in case there are any further issues. Allowing the deputy premier, should that happen, to distance himself from the outcome and blame the bumbling militia.
There was a burst of static as the needle on the Victrola reached the end of the record. Rossel nodded.
‘Of course, comrade.’
*
The Packard sped back through the black gates out into the grey Moscow evening. Colonel Sarkisov was driving. Rossel and Nikitin sat in the back. The lieutenant lit up a papirosa and then opened the file on his lap. Both he and Nikitin stared down at the name – ringed in blue pen – on the bottom left-hand corner of the second page: Karl Ilyich Eliasberg.
After a moment, Nikitin spoke.
‘It makes sense, don’t you think? Bears out your crazy theory, Rossel?’
Nikitin sounded calm but his cheeks were waxy and white. Rossel was not the only man in the car who was happy to get out of Beria’s office in one piece.
He took a couple of seconds before answering.
‘I suppose so.’
‘You suppose so?’ Sarkisov broke in.
Rossel looked up to find the MGB man staring at him via the driver’s mirror.
Sarkisov resumed looking at the road ahead but kept talking.
‘Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime. I’ve heard the boss say that many times, Comrade Rossel,’ said the major. ‘He’s shown us our man. Maestro Eliasberg. I strongly advise you to first find him, and then a nice crime to hang him by. Beria wants this all tied up before the Party Congress, and we shall damn well give him exactly what he wants.’
33
Friday November 2
Often the chase has an uncertain beginning until a shout – or a shot – rings out. So it was this time.
To Rossel’s left was a ragged expanse of snow that somewhere became salt water. In front of him, a whole street of poorly constructed apartment blocks extended towards the distant, blue-grey smudge of the Gulf of Finland.
It was hard to believe that Maestro Eliasberg had been reduced to living here.
Rossel’s pulse was racing as the thin line of MGB troops spread out. Two men advanced to the target building, two more took up positions to their right, tucking their AK-47s into their shoulders, while three others tramped out into the wasteland to encircle their quarry, untroubled by the formless terrain.
Only now did Rossel notice the sky, and in the same instant wondered how he could not have noticed it. It was livid, tiger-striped in red and purple. Someone kicked the door in and the first two MGB troops dashed inside. Nikitin stood still, attentive, one hand resting on the roof of the ZIS. Yet after a minute the men had not re-emerged. The major strode forward and disappeared inside the building, which groaned and cowered in the teeth of the surging wind.
Rossel braced himself. Expecting the sound of a shot.
But none came.
The foetid wretch who was propelled through the door, pursued by Nikitin, was drunk, drunk beyond the power of thought and speech. And was not Eliasberg – more of a stairwell-dwelling tramp.
Now Rossel heard the shout.
Then the shot.
Who had spotted the furtive brown figure struggling through the snow would never be clear. The lieutenant leapt forward as if he, himself, were running from enemy fire and followed the two MGB men who had seen the conductor, perhaps a hundred metres ahead. His boots crunched on snow and, under the snow, grasses and clumps of dirty sand. It was energy-sapping and soon he was breathing hard, sweating even in the cold. This world was like a painting, he thought – blurred whiteness punctuated by muddy brown trees as thin as single pencil marks; ugliness thinly veiled.
Rossel looked over his shoulder. As well as the two MGB officers in front of him, the others were also in pursuit. With them would be Nikitin. But Nikitin would shoot Eliasberg. Almost certainly, yes. That would be case closed. He was already roaring at his men to bring the fugitive down. The MGB soldiers, muffled in coats and boots, stumbled where the snow covered the boundary between road and pavement, pavement and shore, even shore and the half-frozen fringe of the water. No one fired yet – the first shot had been a warning and the warning had been ignored. The next bullets would be for strictly practical purposes.
Eliasberg was silhouetted against the white as he tried to climb one of the walls of stone and wood that jutted out towards the water – breakers to stop the port channels from silting up. Eliasberg dropped over the other side and kept on running. But it was clear now. He had no hope. The chasing packs had already halved the distance and would vault the breaker far faster than him.
Rossel was gaining on the two leading men. His heart was bulging against his lungs and his legs were leaden. When was the last time he had slept? Properly?
Eliasberg scaled another of the wooden breakers. An MGB officer stopped, raised his weapon and bent his head to one side, but hesitated. Rossel charged past him, putting himself in between the weapon and the musician’s silhouette. Eliasberg’s face was now discernible – he was running in a heavy coat but no hat, or most likely his hat had fallen off somewhere. Rossel scaled the breaker himself but fell heavily down the other side and his knees sank into the deep snow. Eliasberg was yelling something now. Rossel raised his head and saw the conductor also on his knees, his hands waving frantically in the icy roaring wind.
‘I confess,’ the conductor screamed. ‘I confess, I confess.’
34
Saturday November 3
A pair of manacles dangled from the ceiling. The metal was rusty but it was possible to distinguish between the brown of patient corrosion and the darker, fresher stains of blood. There were streaks of russet on the concrete walls, too, about three metres from where any interrogation victim would be suspended. As well as splashes on the floor, spots on the ceiling. And the first thing that would enter anyone’s head, no matter how brave, no matter how innocent, as they entered this room would be: what could they have done to the person who was here before me to extract so much blood?
Eliasberg’s file lay before Nikitin but the MGB major was not looking at it. Rossel could not see his face but from the angle of his head, the tapping of his fingers, he thought Nikitin must be preparing his attack.
Two loud clunks snapped the major out of his trance and the iron door to the chamber scraped open. Eliasberg was escorted only a metre or two inside before the guard let go of his elbow, turned smartly and locked them in again. The conductor took a half step towards Nikitin’s desk before his eyes flickered to the dark traces all around – a spoor of horrors, Rossel thought, like stumbling upon the jungle trail of some, as yet unidentified, man-eating beast. The musician espied R
ossel, took him in, tried to fit him into the overall scene. An empty chair, bent with wooden slats nailed to a cheap metal frame, beckoned.
Rossel simply gazed back. That was his duty. He was once again in the place where the road of his life had forked and he had ceased to be the carefree, scruffy young musician who everyone at the conservatory expected to forge a successful solo career, or, even, lead the great Philharmonic Orchestra. Instead, he had become another, harsher version of himself, a poker-faced militia cop who wouldn’t take no for an answer.
There were no clues as to how this would unfold, if it did not follow a typical course of out-and-out torture, signed confession and death. And so the conductor advanced to his seat and sat. Eliasberg, always thin, now looked skeletal. He was pale, unshaven, and unrecognisable as the haughty principal conductor of the Leningrad Radio Orchestra and guest maestro of a dozen other ensembles and opera houses. There was bruising around both of his eyes and his bottom lip was bloodied.
At first, Nikitin seemed to stare past the conductor. Or through him. Finally, after an icy pause, he spoke.
‘Karl Ilyich Eliasberg, you have said that you confess to your crime.’
Eliasberg nodded. ‘That is correct. Yes, I took it.’
Nikitin’s brow crinkled.
‘Took it? Took what?’
‘The score. Shostakovich’s score, of course.’
‘There’s no use in prevaricating, Karl Ilyich. We have not brought you here to talk about the stolen score. Although, of course, when they searched your apartment last night, my men found it. The score of the Leningrad Symphony that you used to conduct the premier in this city is a historic document, not your personal possession. But enough of that. You are here to confess to murder.’
Eliasberg’s eyes widened. ‘Murder?’
‘You murdered and mutilated five people. All members at one time or another, we are beginning to suspect, of your own orchestra.’
The conductor shook his head. ‘No, no, no,’ he said, ‘you are mistaken. All I did was steal an orchestral score, Shostakovich’s score. That I will admit to. But I never murdered anyone – the idea is preposterous!’
The major stood. He grasped the manacles with his right hand. Yanked at them so they began to swing, pendulum-like, backward and forward.
Eliasberg’s eyes followed them.
The conductor began to speak. The words and syllables falling, rushing, leaping from his bruised lips.
‘I was a great conductor with a wonderful reputation,’ he said. ‘I was given the honour of performing the Shostakovich symphony, his seventh, the symbol of the siege in Leningrad. The symbol of Soviet defiance. But after the war, Mravinsky, the great maestro, returned. Disdainful, bitter and jealous. He found me celebrated. Decorated – an Honoured Artist of the Soviet Union. So he used his influence and blocked me from ever again conducting in this city. And then, yes, I stole that score of the Leningrad Symphony – one of a bare handful of originals – because although Mravinsky conducted the premiere of Shostakovich’s fifth and sixth symphonies, the seventh is mine, the Leningrad belongs to me, to Karl Ilyich Eliasberg. Because while Mravinsky was cowering thousands of miles from the front, I was here, here, rounding up an ensemble of half-dead violinists and clarinettists and percussionists, nurturing them back to life, bullying the famished horns into perfection, driving on my band of skeletons and ghosts. Murder? After all the trouble I had in finding them? Don’t be ridiculous.’
Nikitin thumped the table and half stood, leaning over and glaring at Eliasberg.
‘When they searched your house, my men discovered a list of fifty names inside the score,’ he said. ‘Six of them are underlined. Underlined by you. Four of them are dead, that we know for sure. And when we are certain that another dead body lying in the morgue is the other musician you marked out for murder, you will be further condemned. Besides, Minister Beria himself gave me your name, comrade. You say you are not a murderer but, in my eyes and in the eyes of the Soviet state in that moment – the moment of the minister’s intervention – you became one.’
At the mention of Beria’s name, Eliasberg’s head dropped. A small tear rolled down his nose and he emitted a soft, low mewling. The pathetic whimper of a tiny trapped insect.
Nikitin reached out and patted him on the shoulder.
‘I can save your family,’ he said. ‘You have a sister in Gatchina and your father is in a sanatorium in Novgorod. I know this. Let them be. Let them enjoy life. Confess. Why did you select those victims? Why did you place the bodies on the tracks in that way?’
With one finger he pushed the list of fifty names towards Eliasberg. Six were underlined. ‘Look at these names. Just point to your victims and confirm their identities,’ he said, with a voice of molten honey. ‘Artists are famous for their petty jealousies, are they not? We are now assuming you were motivated by some sort of twisted professional rivalry. You have already talked of your resentment of Mravinsky. It boiled over. Poisoned your soul. Presented itself in unspeakable acts.’
Eliasberg was sobbing in great gulps now but raised his head.
‘I wanted the seventh to be mine. To capture it for myself. That’s all. I knew I was a fool to take the score but I couldn’t help myself,’ he whimpered. ‘Mravinsky, the bastard – yes, I hated him in the way you describe. But nobody else.’
Nikitin looked pleased. Rossel watched the conductor destroy himself. It was never comfortable to see someone fall apart like this. Even the maniacs whose nerves dissolved in the considerably less menacing environment of ordinary police cells. No, it was never good to see such a creature as a man collapse into a formless pile of emotions and instincts, like a sail whose spar had snapped in a storm.
‘Confirm the identities, Comrade Eliasberg. Confess to your crimes,’ said Nikitin.
The major pushed once again at the chain.
Eliasberg sighed as he watched it swing. Then fumbled for the paper and peered at it, sniffling. His finger slid up the list and stopped.
‘This one,’ he said.
He paused and looked closer, the tears dripping off his nose. The finger moved again.
‘This one . . .’
When the conductor pointed to the sixth underlined name, the one who had not yet turned up dead in any frozen field, Rossel knew he was lying.
*
Nikitin led Rossel out of the interrogation cell and down a narrow, whitewashed corridor with grey-green metal doors lining each side, closer together even than in a kommunalka. They climbed two flights of stairs – Rossel wondered if they were back above ground level, out of the dungeon, but there were no windows in the room the major took him into so it was impossible to tell.
‘Let us be seated and drink,’ said Nikitin, stomping over to a corner cabinet full of files and yanking open a cupboard. Out came a bottle of Stolichnaya and two tin mugs. He slammed them on a crate and lowered himself onto one of two stools either side.
‘Let us drink, gundog, to the speed and certainty of Soviet justice as exacted by our great MGB. Little victories like this pathetic arsehole’s confession. In this short, weary life I find it pays to celebrate them.’
*
Nikitin threw some more of the vodka down and grabbed a slice of some black bread he had placed on the table. As he chewed, he regarded the back of one hand and licked a crumb off his forefinger. The major’s voice was a little slurred now. He and Rossel had been drinking for almost an hour.
‘A simple man does not make life complicated. He does what he has to do to survive,’ said Nikitin. ‘For me, survival and talent were one and the same. When they recruited me, I had no idea why – I had never been good at anything before. But they train you, try you out, and together we found that I was good at something: the clashing together of heads, the breaking of noses.’
He sploshed more vodka into their mugs.
‘In the end, I got so good that I could get people to confess just by walking into the room. Before the war, Rossel, before the
war there were so many. So many: like you, like this stuck-up shit Eliasberg. We had no time for anything but our work, and as we worked, we improved. I became like one of your conductors myself, my friend. Sometimes there was no need to even pick up my baton, or take the slightest preparatory bow before they crapped their pants in appreciation. Now that’s a symphony of sorts, is it not?’
‘Do you ever allow them to confess without interrogation?’ asked Rossel, knowing the answer.
Nikitin belched before answering.
‘Never. We always ask questions. Sometimes they confess to the wrong crime or omit important details.’ He raised his chipped blue mug. ‘Anyway, enough of that. Your turn to propose a toast.’
Rossel raised his own mug. ‘To the efficiency of Soviet justice.’
Nikitin, the tip of his nose beginning to redden a little, blinked. ‘Very good,’ he murmured. They drank a little more.
‘What about you, Rossel?’ said Nikitin. ‘Why the militia?’
There was a pat response to that, too. But there was another, a truer one. If the vodka was intended to make him reckless, he would let it happen – he was already at the major’s mercy. Rossel stared into Nikitin’s eyes.
‘Until I came to Leningrad before the war, I lived with my parents. They were – well, you have my file. They were transported to the gulag. And died there. My sister and I were put in the care of a state orphanage in Kostroma, a small town on the Volga, near Yaroslavl. Galya and I played in the town orchestra. The orchestra gave its big concert every spring and it was one of the most important days in Kostroma’s life. In the winter of 1935, we were rehearsing something very ambitious – a Mozart symphony, number 40 in G minor. Everyone knows it, everyone can hum it.’
Rossel broke off and whistled the notes.
Nikitin recognised the piece and banged his tin mug on the table in crude accompaniment.
‘It was a hard winter,’ Rossel continued. ‘You could walk onto the river and skate, and jump up and down, play hockey with sticks and a can, and it was like playing on concrete, no chance of going through. Cars and trucks wouldn’t start, trains wouldn’t start, roads were cut off. It came in waves, spells of minus thirty, minus thirty-five, lasting for weeks. Minus fifteen felt like a tropical respite.’